Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. After the sudden death of her mother when Strayed was in her early twenties, her world fell apart. “I was living alone in a studio apartment in Minneapolis, separated from my husband and working as a waitress, as low and mixed-up as I’d ever been,” she writes. Desperate to escape her situation and find what she calls “radical aloneness,” Stayed set out in the summer of 1995 at the age of 26 to hike from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State. What she found was an ability to navigate not only the dangerous physical challenges of the Pacific Coast Trail, but the world. Strayed is also the author of the novel Torch and her stories and essays have appeared in numerous magazine and journals, including The New York Times Magazine, Allure, Self, and The Sun. Her latest book, Tiny Beautiful Things, is a compilation of her Dear Sugar columns from The Rumpus.

Vendela Vida is the author of the critically acclaimed novels And Now You Can Go, Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Girls on the Verge, and most recently The Lovers. Vida is a co-founder of The Believer and 826 Valencia. She also co-wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film Away We Go, directed by Sam Mendes and starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph.